Cyberpunk Read Free Page A

the northbound
    tram, and then I started off on a big loop that kept me off the routes
    Mom and Dad used to get to work and took me back past home and in
    the complete opposite direction from school. Half an hour and six
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    ©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke
    transfers later I came whipping into Buddy’s All-Nite Burgers. Rayno
    was sitting in our booth, glaring into his caffix. It was0/
7:55:23
and I’d
    beat Georgie and Lisa there.
    “What’s on line?” I asked as I dropped into my seat, across from
    Rayno. He just looked up at me, eyes piercing blue through his fine,
    white-blond eyebrows, and I knew better than to ask again.
    I sat down. I shut up. Whatever it was had to be important , to make
    it worth dumping MoJo like that, but there was no point trying to talk to
    Rayno when he was clammed, so I locked eyes on him. He went back to
    looking at his caffix, taking the occasional sip. For a mo I had this crazy
    idea he was being too derzky to talk just ‘cause he wanted me to flag his
    new hair. This week it was bleached Utter Aryan White, side-shaved,
    and stiffed out into The Wedge. Geez, it did look sharp!
    Of course it did. Rayno always looked sharp. Rayno was seventeen,
    and a junior. He wore scruff black leather and flash plastic; he kept his
    style current to the nanosecond and cranked to the max. Rayno was
    derzky realitized.
    But after a minute or so I realized he wasn’t being derzky, he was
    being too pissed to talk. Which was reassuring, in a way, given how
    worried he had me, but watching it got old real fast so I craned my neck,
    looked over the booth divider, gave Buddy’s the quick scan. Nope,
    nobody else interesting in the place. Somebody back in the kitchen must
    have flagged me when I stuck my head up, though, ‘cause as soon as I
    was back down solid in my seat the little trademark snatch of fifties
    music swooped by, stereo shifting to a focus at the wall end of the table,
    and the foot-high holo of Buddy McFry came jitterbugging out from
    behind the napkin dispenser.
    “Good morning and welcome to Buddy’s!” the holo said, all bright
    and enthusiastic, looking just dweeby as could be in his peaked cap,
    white shirt, pegged chinos and penny loafers. “Today’s breakfast special
    is two genuine high-cholesterol eggs fried in bacon fat, two strips of real
    hickory-smoked bacon, and a cup of our world famous double-caffeine
    coffee! Sure, it’s unhealthy and ecologically unsound, but don’t you
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    ©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke
    deserve a little guilty pleasure today?” The holo grinned, danced to a
    stop; pulled a pencil out from behind his ear and a pad out of his back
    pocket, set pencil point to paper, and froze. The pseudosax hit a peak
    and the music stopped.
    The holo wasn’t true interactive, of course. It was just waiting for
    me to say something that it could compress, stick in the fryboy’s
    voicemail queue. I checked my watch. Ten. Eleven. Twelve...
    At fifteen seconds, the program timed out. The music started up
    again. The holo lifted the pencil off the order pad and shook his head.
    “Well I can see that you’re not interested in today’s special. Would you
    like to see a menu, or are you ready to order now?” Again, the music
    peaked and died. The little dork froze, grinning.
    This time it took twenty seconds to time out, and then the holo
    stayed frozen. Instead, a realtime voice from an actual human came
    through, raspy. “ Look kid, you sit in the booth, there’s a two-dollar
    minimum . So you gonna order or what ?”
    Rayno cracked out of his big silence. “We are waiting for the rest of
    our party,” he said, in a great low and sullen. “We will order then. In the
    meantime, don’t ‘bug’ us, ‘man’.”
    There was a lag of a coupla seconds, then the music started up again.
    “Oh, you need more time to think?” the holo said cheerful, as it started
    to dance back towards the napkin dispenser. “Okay, I’ll be back—”
    Rayno